Climate Gatekeepers

Today the Associated Press has finally come out with an opinion on the Climategate emails. It ain’t the most honest thing you will read today.

but the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them — about 1 million words in total.

An exhaustive review by five reporters? They must have been panting after this one. I hope the bubble heads didn’t sprain their brains reading about RegEM or multivariate regression. Two days ago, I saw a Chicago reporter doing a report on new Burt Rutan toy spaceplane, they apparently didn’t have video footage so they showed a shot of the space shuttle landing. The ‘reporter’ kept asking the crew if that was the new Burt Rutan plane or the space shuttle – nobody answered. She eventually decided it was the original spaceship 1.

That’s not the point though. This story is done with intent, these people are liars in my opinion and have prostrated themselves yet again for a liberal government agenda. Their bias could not be more obvious. Beware the government media complex – Mike Savage

First, I haven’t seen any of the blogs or serious critics claim that global warming has ended, as is implied in the first quote and elsewhere. To be fair, they have a little teenie tiny bit of skepticism in their report.

The scientists were so convinced by their own science and so driven by a cause “that unless you’re with them, you’re against them,” said Mark Frankel, director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also reviewed the communications.

Frankel saw “no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very ‘generous interpretations.'”

Frankel apparently doesn’t understand that the data was manipulated in several instances to present a worse than can be expected result or in Briffa’s case to the IPCC – Bodge the result.

The e-mails were stolen from the computer network server of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in southeast England, an influential source of climate science, and were posted online last month. The university shut down the server and contacted the police.

The AP’s continued bias is shown here in holding the CRU party line that the emails were stolen. Hell, I consider it a theft too but realize that there is a lot of evidence for whistleblower work here. In my opinion, they should be giving the boys a medal, rather than hunting them down for prison time.

One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming. It is not clear if any data was destroyed; two U.S. researchers denied it.

Ya see how they again avoid the point. Trying to appear unbiased to the public while just grazing the point. First we have a statement directly from jones that emails were destroyed to avoid FOIA requests. In addition, we have emails between scientists stating specifically that one deleted everything to do with the IPCC report and requesting others to do the same. Here’s a quote from Jones:

About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all.

Second there are 3 emails which specifically state that the FOIA requests from skeptics would not be honored by the government – because after several half hour sessions Jones convinced the government employee that the FOIA requests did not need to be followed.

Phil Jones said the same thing to the press- We’ve not deleted any emails or data here at CRU. But the quote doesn’t hold up with the facts. Denying Email Deletion

It just keeps going.

When the journal, Climate Research, published a skeptical study, Penn State scientist Mann discussed retribution this way: “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”

That skeptical study turned out to be partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

There is debate in this case as to whether the funding for this paper actually was used from the American Petrolium Institute, but not to the AP, but that’s beside the point.

Dear bubbleheads of the AP,

How would one get the IPCC to fund a document which went against the consensus in any way?

How do you perceive the potential for bias in ‘government funded’ research, or is there simply no bias?

Love,

Jeff

Then this:

In the past three weeks since the e-mails were posted, longtime opponents of mainstream climate science have repeatedly quoted excerpts of about a dozen e-mails. Republican congressmen and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have called for either independent investigations, a delay in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases or outright boycotts of the Copenhagen international climate talks. They cited a “culture of corruption” that the e-mails appeared to show.

That is not what the AP found. There were signs of trying to present the data as convincingly as possible.

Really?? So the AP bubbleheads actually took the time to plot a graph of the data. The data is right there in the emails? Did they actually look up what was done with the data they were discussing in the IPCC report to see how it was presented in the end? Clearly not!

The “trick” that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.

The tree rings are held out to be temperature data, the trick to hide the decline in this temperature data was used to support the validity of these trees as thermometers. The trick gives the black art science of treemometry validity. Do ya’ see how they just miss the point. The only thing misleading is the entire body of work by Michael Mann that keeps sailing through peer review unmolested as if by majic.

The bubbleheads contacted three moderate scientists below?!! What is a moderate in science, and how the hell is North a moderate?

None of the e-mails flagged by the AP and sent to three climate scientists viewed as moderates in the field changed their view that global warming is man-made and a threat. Nor did it alter their support of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which some of the scientists helped write.

“My overall interpretation of the scientific basis for (man-made) global warming is unaltered by the contents of these e-mails,” said Gabriel Vecchi, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.

Gerald North, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, headed a National Academy of Sciences study that looked at — and upheld as valid — Mann’s earlier studies that found the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries.

“In my opinion the meaning is much more innocent than might be perceived by others taken out of context. Much of this is overblown,” North said.

Mann contends he always has been upfront about uncertainties, pointing to the title of his 1999 study: “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties and Limitations.”

North’s group concluded falsely that the recent years were the hottest in – 3 centuries, not 10 as his studyclaimed. This is also a false representation of reality as when it’s broken down, the Mann study conclusions are based on single set of trees known to be problematic. Whatever, the whole article has been one big lie so let’s throw out another one.

Now look what the bubbleheads do to McIntyre.

“We find that the authors are overreaching in the conclusions that they’re trying to draw from the data that they have,” McIntyre said in a telephone interview.

McIntyre, 62, of Toronto, was trained in math and economics and says he is “substantially retired” from the mineral exploration industry, which produces greenhouse gases.

The AP is mentioned several times in the e-mails, usually in reference to a published story. One scientist says his remarks were reported with “a bit of journalistic license” and “I would have rephrased or re-expressed some of what was written if I had seen it before it was released.

It seems there might have been a bit of journalistic license this time as well.

List of the responsible individuals from the AP:

Jeff Donn in Boston, Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles contributed to this report. Troy Thibodeaux in Washington provided technical assistance. Satter reported from London, Borenstein from Washington and Ritter from New York.

These people have just produced a piece of propaganda disguised as credible reporting. The intent is to fool the public and is itself a fraud. You wonder why people don’t read the papers any more? — Here’s a hint, it ain’t because we’re trying to save the earth from tree farmers.

A link to the propaganda is here. I put the link on the period to prevent accidental IQ loss from inadvertent clicking of it. Read it at your own risk. tAV accepts no responsibility for damages real or perceived from reading it.
h/t lady in red.

34 Responses to “Climate Gatekeepers”

Garysaid

How does one explain something to AP reporters who are incapable of understanding it? Even if the 5-watt bulb somehow clicks on, the editors will mess it all up – either inadvertently (they were former reporters after all) or deliberately. I haven’t read an AP report in years that’s been correct.

1119957715.txt To: uu@W – “If I were on the greenhouse deniers’ side, I would be inclined to focus on the wide range of paleo results and the differences between them as an argument for dismissing them all.”

1134418588.txt Smear the S Pole temp data across Antartica

1136918726.txt “you can make MM look like ignorant idiots.”

1197325034.txt Scientific Fraud (by CO2 hypothesis rejectors)

1257546975.txt “We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming — and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.

1257532857.txt “A bunch of us are putting something together on the latest Lindzen and Choi crap GRL). Not a comment, but a separate paper to avoid giving Lindzen the last word.”

I’d like to spend more time on this, but am heading out to a small valley in the western mountains for a few months and need to finish my preparations.

Admitted, it is disappointing that the media refuse to give up on their latest scare story, but the more outlandish their claims, the more likely a few people are to start to question the cut of the emperor’s cloth. Slowly, slowly…

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

After reviewing the discussion in Trenberth 2009, it’s apparent that what he meant was this:

“Global warming is still happening – our planet is still accumulating heat. But our observation systems aren’t able to comprehensively keep track of where all the energy is going. Consequently, we can’t definitively explain why surface temperatures have gone down in the last few years. That’s a travesty!”

Skeptics use Trenberth’s email to characterise climate scientists as secretive and deceptive. However, when one takes the trouble to acquaint oneself with the science, the opposite becomes apparent. Trenberth outlines his views in a clear, open manner, frankly articulating his frustrations at the limitations of observation systems. Trenberth’s opinions didn’t need to be illegally stolen and leaked onto the internet. They were already publicly available in the peer reviewed literature – and much less open to misinterpretation than a quote-mined email.”

Kenneth Fritschsaid

Jeff ID, you and I both know that those who are charged or take on a charge to analyze these emails and who do not want to see the general mood and intent that they reveal, vis a vis the maintenance of the consensus, are going to point to their finding of no false statements.

Lets take the now most famous email that pointed to the egregious scientific lapse in “hiding the decline”. These scientists did what an adverserial lawyer or marketing firm advocating for a client might do (and knowing that circumstance we would so consider when we evaluated their evidence) but surely not what an ethical scientist would have done. By doing what was done, they have deceieved. Now an apologist can say, correctly, that no directly false material was presented here. On the other hand, if they do not deal with the intent and the circumstances, they are simply apologists and not disinterested analyzers – which in turn makes their mission a deception or at least to the less aware.

So I think we need not throw around the liar label, but instead point to the more awful deception on the part of the emailers and some of those who would analyze the emails for their own purposes.

Does anyone else think it’s bizarre that the Associated Press takes care to mention that a particular skeptic study was “partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute” but neglects to alert its readers to the apparent close relationships between the scientists in these e-mails and activist groups such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Union of Concerned Scientists?

In this e-mail, Greenpeace drafts a letter-to-the-editor that two government-employed scientists apparently then sign their names to. Rather than being transparent about the close connection that exists between the scientists and Greenpeace, the first sentence of the letter gives rather an opposite impression: “Without wishing to comment on the dispute between BP and Greenpeace…”http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=32&filename=872202064.txt

If funding and connections to the oil industry are newsworthy in a scientific context, why aren’t left-wing, environmental, activist connections equally newsworthy? Has the Associated Press really analyzed the context of these messages in a manner that a dispassionate observer would consider fair-minded and even-handed?

Michael Ksaid

My guess is they will never find the “criminal” hackers they are want to blame for this whole mess. Imagine if their search turned up a whistle blower instead. Ouch! An insider ratting them out? Surely not.
Far better is it to continue the distraction of a hunt for some pajama clad techie at his basement computer, or some evil Russian plotter, victimizing the innocent servants of mankind at EAU.

kevokasaid

Alf (#6) Both the paper and the email are from 2009. Trenberth is consistent in the message in both.

Unfortunately, Al Gore and the AP did not read the paper, so the email is more useful.

If you read either very closely, you end up with the following:

1) We modeled and predicted Global Warming based on surface temperatures.
2) Surface temperatures are no longer rising according to our predictions.
3) We cannot rely on surface temperatures any longer and that is a travesty.

What I conclude (and do not think I am alone) for number 3) is:

3) We cannot rely on the models that made the predictions, and that is a travesty.

Eric Barnessaid

RE 10:
Donna, I’d say the AP is horribly biased (and are far from alone). I also am getting tired of the assumption that anything associated with oil is corrupt, while gov’t funded research is just assumed to be as pure as the driven snow.
Americans have the highest quality of life on the planet because of our energy companies. There are certain instances where I think that the Energy Industry tilted the scales of Gov’t to their own benefit (Iraq). But, there is just an assumption of villainy regarding Big Oil by the left, and it is completely unwarranted. I’ve historically voted mostly Democrat, but I will no longer do so until that party cleans itself of the socialists that are ruining it. Sad that voting is always a process of voting against the most dangerous group.

timetochooseagainsaid

The problem with the media is that on this issue they always want to say that something has to be much more than it possibly could be-big surprise, when they dig, they find that the straw man falls apart like a wall made of chalk hit with a baseball bat.

hpx83said

I’m sorry, but what? Did the Associated Press read the same emails? Or did they send a request to Phil Jones & gang to personally send them a few emails from conversations the past 11 years? I think this just goes to prove what one is up against. Ah hell, lets just watch them destroy the world economy, at least we get “I told you so’s” when all the granary crops of the world freezes the same year sometime in the future and half the world population starves.

Seansaid

I think you are missing the point. The theory of AGW requires that there be a warming trend. If one is not present, it casts doubt on the overall hypothesis.

It is strange to me that when the instruments used to detect temperatures around the globe show warming, they are to be respected and considered reliable. However, when the same instruments show cooling, it must be because the heat/energy is hiding in some undetectable place. So either way the Earth is ALWAYS warming, regardless of what is observed.

This my friend, is not science. You don’t form a hypothesis and then stick to it regardless of whether it is supported or not. That sort of belief is called faith, and as great as faith is, it doesn’t belong in science.

Kenneth Fritschsaid

Skeptics use Trenberth’s email to characterise climate scientists as secretive and deceptive. However, when one takes the trouble to acquaint oneself with the science, the opposite becomes apparent. Trenberth outlines his views in a clear, open manner, frankly articulating his frustrations at the limitations of observation systems. Trenberth’s opinions didn’t need to be illegally stolen and leaked onto the internet. They were already publicly available in the peer reviewed literature – and much less open to misinterpretation than a quote-mined email.”

I suspect to what the thinking skeptic would point in this statement is why Trenbreth was so vague. I take him to mean that the models do not account for this warming lapse and thus the observations must be wrong and particularly so in the world where the models are given confidence beyond that that we estimate as the observed.

It adds to the uncertainty in that he implies the observations are incorrect. If the models are also incorrect (what do we use to verify them) then where are we?

alfsaid

“Trenberth outlines his views in a clear, open manner, frankly articulating his frustrations at the limitations of observation systems.”
Is Trenberth in a not so open and frank manner admitting that he should maybe change his conclusions to match his observations?

Papertigersaid

It would be interesting to see the UAH MSU record with the CRU derived “correction” removed.

I bet Roy Spenser has a copy he keeps on the back shelf somewhere.

That coop station from Alaska post, that’s the way to end this game.
We know from ChiefIO that the fraudsters have systematicly moved their GHCN stations South to maintain the illusion.
CRU is done with money.
GISS was pretty much pushing up daisies before the email.
Kick the slats out from under Karl and the NCDC and it’s game over.

Another thing to look for is the separate ocean temp data. This is presumably not territorial, therefore no banana republic confidentiality agreements to hide behind.

boballabsaid

LOL Trenberth told Time Online what he meant and dug himself in deeper:

“Trenberth, who is connected to about 100 e-mails in the uploaded documents, says some of his comments have been radically misconstrued. In one e-mail, he writes, “We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it’s a travesty that we can’t.” Some climate-change deniers have heralded that line as proof that global warming is a hoax, but it refers, Trenberth says, to a problem with the observational instruments used to measure temperatures. “Our instruments couldn’t account for cooling in 2008,” Trenberth says. “So we need to figure out what’s wrong with our system of measurement. But that doesn’t undermine the fact that global warming is real.”

Now read that quote from Nov 30th carefully. He said the instruments couldn’t account for cooling in 2008, so we need to figure out what’s wrong with our system of measuremnet.

Now these are the same instruments and methods they used in 2007, 2006, 2005 and so forth. So you are at a logic check: the instruments show cooling, the models and theory says it should be warming. Now in every other branch of science instrumental observation trumps theory and models, but not here oh no the instruments have to be bad and the system of measurement wrong (which by the way is the same instruments and system of measurement that they used for this year and the UK Met office used to named 2009 one of the hottest in history).

There it is bald faced unscientific hypocrisy. If the instruments read warming they are correct if they read cooling they are wrong, no examing of the models or the theory allowed.

papertigersaid

Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming.Specifically,surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface.This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies. Atmospheric data sets now show global-average warming that is similar to the surface warming. …

… Considerable progress has been made since the production of reports by the NRC and the IPCC in 2000 and 2001. Data sets for the surface and from satellites and radiosondes (temperature sensors on weather balloons)have been extended and improved,and new satellite and radiosonde data sets have been developed.

This is the executive summary of a series of meetings called the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), which was a method to strong arm the radiosonde record and UAH MSU (which agreed with each other up to that point)into rough agreement with the the CRU product.

Notice there was never any question of redeveloping or analyzing the surface station record. It was all about getting UAH roped into the global warming corral.

dribblesaid

K Fritsch: “Lets take the now most famous email that pointed to the egregious scientific lapse in “hiding the decline”. These scientists did what an adverserial lawyer or marketing firm advocating for a client might do (and knowing that circumstance we would so consider when we evaluated their evidence) but surely not what an ethical scientist would have done. By doing what was done, they have deceieved. Now an apologist can say, correctly, that no directly false material was presented here. On the other hand, if they do not deal with the intent and the circumstances, they are simply apologists and not disinterested analyzers – which in turn makes their mission a deception or at least to the less aware. ”

Parts of a graph have been deliberately pruned off to cover up information that the authors don’t want the audience to see. Presentation of the deleted information would be detrimental, if not disastrous, for the authors.

I would classify this as a straightforward example of the presentation of false material. What more straightforward example of a lie is there? These people are liars pure and simple. Pretending that it is not so would seem to be a case of excessive and undeserved politeness.

Lakesaid

I am a science teacher who is reading through the facts and opinions of the CRU ‘Climategate’ email and files in order to present my students with both sides of the debate. I have turned to the Associated Press coverage of many issues in the past, depending on your collective work for accurate quotes, balanced coverage, and unbiased reporting.

The review was authored in part by AP employee Seth Borenstein, and the authors’ ultimate conclusion is that the emails do not show any problems with the science or the data but merely reveal the scientists being petty and human.

This is a fair opinion from an outsider, and one worth taking into account. However, I was troubled to find that Mr. Borenstein is not an outsider; in fact, he is one of the correspondents in the emails. On July 23, 2009, Mr. Borenstein wrote an email to ‘Kevin, Gavin, and Mike’, three of the principle climate scientists involved in the emails. The email is archived here, in a nested reply: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=988&filename=1248790545.txt

In my mind, this reads as the correspondence of an insider and a person who has a specific viewpoint. I have no problem with Mr. Borenstein having these views, but I am suspicious that there is a conflict of interest when he is supposed to be reporting in an unbiased and objective matter on the same material. His opinion of the emails’ contents has clearly been stretched into the review of referenced above. Because he is part of the email set that he is reviewing, I believe he should recuse himself of this story as a party with a conflict of interest.

The media, and especially the gold standard of the AP, has a responsibility to separate themselves from the stories they cover. Mr. Borenstein cannot separate himself from this issue because he is in the emails, so he should not be reporting on it, in my opinion.

…ultimately, it means it is the responsibility of every one of us to ensure that these standards are upheld. Any time a question is raised about any aspect of our work, it should be taken seriously.

I am questioning an aspect of Mr. Borenstein’s work, and I believe it should be taken seriously by him and by your organization.

The following two sections from the Statement of News Values and Principles also apply:

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The AP respects and encourages the rights of its employees to participate actively in civic, charitable, religious, public, social or residential organizations.

However, AP employees must avoid behavior or activities – political, social or financial – that create a conflict of interest or compromise our ability to report the news fairly and accurately, uninfluenced by any person or action. Nothing in this policy is intended to abridge any rights provided by the National Labor Relations Act.

EXPRESSIONS OF OPINION:
Anyone who works for the AP must be mindful that opinions they express may damage the AP’s reputation as an unbiased source of news. They must refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in any public forum, whether in Web logs, chat rooms, letters to the editor, petitions, bumper stickers or lapel buttons, and must not take part in demonstrations in support of causes or movements.

I request that these concerns be forwarded to Mr. Borenstein’s editors and supervisors. I would appreciate an acknowledgement of receipt of this request and a response from Mr. Borenstein and other members of your staff that address conflict of interest issues. Thank you.

Arn Riewesaid

“McIntyre, 62, of Toronto, was trained in math and economics and says he is “substantially retired” from the mineral exploration industry, which produces greenhouse gases.”

Seth! You just couldn’t resist, could you? Your stripes are showing.

No one would argue with the first part of that statement being straight reporting. The last 4 words are meant for only one purpose, to attach an implied moral value to the subject being discussed. Suddenly, McIntyre is not only a math & economics expert, but also one of questionable morality if he could work for an industry that generates “greenhouse gases”

How about you? Are you one of those questionable characters that work for an industry that generates “greenhouse gases”. I thought so. Shame on you.

“I was a co-ordinating lead author [for the IPCC]… [I]t gave me insight into the flaws behind the whole process.

The IPCC claims that it has thousands of scientists and almost as many reviewers of the scientists’ work to produce their reports. There are two problems, however. In the scientific world I move in, “review” means that your work is scrutinised by several independent, anonymous reviewers chosen by the editor.

However, when I entered the IPCC world, the reviewers were there at the worktable, criticising our drafts, and finally meeting with all us co-ordinators and many of the IPCC functionaries in a draftfest.

The product was not reviewed in the accepted sense of the word — there was no independence of review, and the reviewers were anything but anonymous. The result is not scientific.

The process is so flawed that the result is tantamount to fraud. As an authority, the IPCC should be consigned to the scrapheap without delay.”